I use Comcast for cable Internet, and I’m generally happy with that. My account there also came with an email address, which I’ve used solely for a few monitoring scripts that run on my server. Nobody knows the address.

A few weeks ago, I received a spam message addressed to my Comcast email address. I assumed it was a fluke, but over the last few weeks I’ve received about twenty more. I just changed my username and email address there.

There’s a remote, remote chance that someone was guessing random email addresses, but I don’t think mine would have been that easy to guess. So it seems like Comcast might have sold a list of customer addresses. I made the new one longer and more random, so if any spam comes to that one, I’ll know for sure.

I have the same problem with Earthlink. In fact, I don’t use the Earthlink address at all, but another one that forwards to my earthlink e-mail address; my return address also points to the pseudo address.

I don’t think it was Comcast. We have four email accounts there, and only one gets spam. That is the one we used to email the neices and nephews. My guess: one of their machines was compromised, and the address book read. Perhaos an argument for Thunderbird over Outelook Express…

This was definitely Comcast I emailed them for this problem and they apologized for some of their email address that have gotten out and that I was one of them. So you say “Shame on Comcast”. It’s true they are the guilty party. Accident I don’t think so. Greed most likely. Will it happen again YES IT WILL.

Its so hard to educate people on how spam works,I can assure u it isn’t Comcast that is selling your email Addys, it happens with any email domain name,believe me. If your email address is even remotely easy to guess spammers will get it. The only reason why someone at comcast probably apologized was because its easier to just apologize and agree than it is to try and educate some people and how spam works, because 9 out of 10 times they won’t be happy that u are trying to help them and educate them, they will assume you are arguing with them and ask to speak to a Supervisor, believe I Know.